State of the Robot Art: TAIDA Wins Grand Prize at Robot Art Contest

A robot named TAIDA developed by the NTU International Center of Excellence on Intelligent Robotics and Automation Research (NTU-iCeiRA) recently won the grand prize of $30,000 at the debut Robot Art Contest.

TAIDA out-painted its fellow roboartists from up to 7 countries with what the judges described as “the relative sophistication in the robot’s color mixing abilities.”

The entries were evaluated via a combination of public votes (40%) and professional (60%) judges. TAIDA won the most public votes and also received high praise by the panel of judges, which includes working artists, critics, and technologists.

In looking at the different styles of artwork submitted in this year’s contest, it is evident that the variety of techniques applied by each robot is in essence a challenge in creative thinking and originality. These techniques, according to the organizers, are what give the robots its signature artistic style.

TAIDA, for example, created its paintings by first decomposing an image into abstract shapes. It then added detail and richness layer by layer to create the award-winning works of art we see today.

Team TAIDA was led by iCeiRA Director Prof. Ing-Ren C. Luo (羅仁權) of the Department of Electrical Engineering and student Ming-Jyun Hong (洪銘駿).

For the full list of NTU’s artworks, please click HERE